How to enable exFAT in Ubuntu

Today’s modern filesystems were built with spinning-disk hard drives in mind. This is true for Linux’s Ext2/3/4 Windows’ NTFS and server filesystems like XFS and ZFS. And of course so was the original FAT though it wasn’t so much optimised more simply being one of the first filesystems designed to address magnetic media.

However it’s the simplicity of FAT that makes it attractive for the new generation of storage mediums based on flash memory. Usually flash memory devices (think SD/memory cards and USB keys) don’t have the fastest interfaces to the computer and any overhead a filesystem introduces simply slows it down. And because flash storage devices don’t often approach the volume of spinning-disk drives you don’t need advanced filesystems to handle them.

FAT has its limitations of course which is why Microsoft’s extended FAT32 is the de-facto for flash storage providing the ability to address up to 2TB using traditional 512-byte sectors while maintaining the simplicity and speed of FAT. Though of course it also lacks features that modern filesystems have such as security and journaling – but these aren’t often needed for flash storage.

However while having served well for some time now FAT32 has its limitations too – mainly the inability to handle single files larger than 4GB. As a filesystem it’s also not the most efficient and can slow down dramatically when large volumes of files are stored in a directory.

Which is why Microsoft introduced exFAT in Windows Vista and Windows 7. exFAT is built on the simplicity of FAT but designed specifically for large volume flash media the type of which we now find in memory cards for cameras portable USB drives and so on.

exFAT is faster than FAT32 and does a better job of maintaining speed with large volumes of files. In other words if you’re carrying around and regularly use USB keys or memory cards you should be probably be using exFAT to make the most of them.

Which is all fine and dandy except that Linux can’t read exFAT volumes. At least not without a little extra help.

So if your USB key carrying escapades include transferring data between mixed-environment systems you’ve got a bit of a problem.

While Linux has long had support for FAT and FAT32 as a new proprietary filesystem we’ve had to wait for the development of a reverse-engineered version of the exFAT driver to get support under Linux. Development versions of the Linux exFAT have been available over the past year but you needed to compile it yourself and futz around with setting it up. Now however the driver has matured and thanks to a PPA (Personal Package Archive) can be installed and used in Ubuntu in just a few steps.

Formatting for exFAT

While the Linux exFAT driver supports reading and writing to exFAT volumes it’s so new there isn’t currently support for creating exFAT volumes. So for the moment you’ll need to start using an exFAT volume by first formatting the device in Windows Vista or Windows 7. This is easy enough to do by simply plugging in the drive right-clicking on it in My Computer and selecting ‘Format’. When the dialog appears choose exFAT as the filesystem.

Formatting in Windows 7 for exFAT.

Installing and mounting

To install ExFat support in Ubuntu pull up a console (‘Applications > Accessories > Terminal’) and run:

sudo -sapt-add-repository ppa:relan/exfatapt-get install fuse-exfat

The driver uses the FUSE (filesystem in userspace) framework. For it to work FUSE needs to be enabled in the kernel. If you use the stock Ubuntu kernels then this is the default so you don’t have to do anything else. If you roll your own drill down to ‘Filesystems > FUSE’ and either compile it in statically or enable it as a ‘M’odule then compile and install your kernel.

While available as a module Ubuntu won’t know to automatically use the driver when you insert an exFAT device. For now you’ll need to manually mount the device and specify the exFAT filesystem. Plug in your device and run:

cat /proc/partitions

Chances are your USB device will be the last partition listed. You can also check by looking at its size and seeing if it matches the size of your USB key.

Next make a temporary directory where you can mount the device. Ubuntu by default attaches removable media under the /media directory so you might as well do the same. Enter the following:

cd /mediasudo -smkdir usbdrivemount -t exfat /dev/sdd1 usbdrive

The drive will appear on your desktop and you can read and write to it like any other. To safely unmount it before removing use ‘sudo umount usbdrive’ from the same directory.

usually you will also need to do an
apt-get update
in between adding the repo & installing the package.
With that change it all worked for me in 12.04. I didn’t even need to do the explicit mount – once fuse-exfat was installed I was able to plug in the device and immediately see the files.

nobody important

remember it is exfat not nonfat or the polyunsaturated filesystem.

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Since at least 14.04 support for exfat is avavilable in the official (universe) repos. The needed packages have different names though. Look for and install exfat-utils en exfat-fuse for instant exfat read/write support (no formatting though)